1. The Field of the Invention
This invention relates to systems, methods, and apparatus for determining various behavioral aspects of a test subject on a surface.
2. Background and Relevant Art
Genetically manipulated mice play a useful role in studying genetic composition and responsiveness of mammalian genes and gene sequences. In the context of neuroscience, behavioral assessments can be made by ascertaining how the genetic manipulations affect brain function as well as whether proposed experimental therapies have any (beneficial or detrimental) effects. For instance, genetically altered mice (knockout, transgenic, etc.) that exhibit disease symptoms have been developed for studying Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and globoid cell leukodystrophy.
Thus, oftentimes, a neuroscientist may use a mouse as a test subject; the mouse may be relatively small (e.g., 25 g in body weight). Additionally, the mouse may exhibit a richness of behavior that may require a multivariate approach to quantify various behavioral functions, such as locomotion, grooming, rearing up, jumping, exploratory behavior, circling, learning and memory (maze learning, object recognition), and presence of abnormalities such as tremor or ataxia. Thus, multiple tests may be needed to fully characterize mouse genetic models of human genetic diseases.
Particularly, ability to determine various aspects of movement of a mammalian test subject on a surface may provide information that may be useful for studying behavioral characteristics of the test subject. For instance, neuroscientist may use test subjects such as genetically manipulated mice (e.g., knockout or knock-in mice) to evaluate behavioral outcomes of genetic modifications. Hence, behavioral outcomes related to particular genetic modification the test subject may inform the researcher about genes or gene sequence roles in the development and/or phenotypes of the test subjects.
Typically, researchers have a variety of motor behavior assessment tools, such as the rotarod, photobeam actometers, video trackers, etc. Existing typical assessment tools, however, have various limitations. For instance, the rotarod may require constraining the behavior expressed by the mouse, and thus, can limit the behaviors observed by the scientist; photobeam actometers lack spatial resolution; video tracking methods are limited by the frame rates, spatial resolution, and lighting conditions. Accordingly, current behavioral measurement methods have limitations tracking movement and/or assessing behavior of test subjects.